Keywords

1 Introduction

It is projected that people over the age of sixty-five will comprise more than 14% of the Chinese population in 2028. This paper defines “elderly people” as those aged sixty-five or over, the definition used by most countries. Further, the proportion of elderly people will rise to more than 23% of the population by 2050. Considering Chinese population figures, 318 million people will be sixty-five years of age or older in 2050. Japan, which neighbors China, had a population of approximately 127 million in 2018, including 35,570,000 people aged sixty-five or older. In other words, elderly people comprise 28% of the population of Japan. In recent years, Japanese nursing homes and facilities for the elderly have begun to make improvements; however, there is a great disparity between nursing homes and facilities for the elderly in urban and rural areas. In rural areas, there is a tendency for many young people to move to urban areas for work, leaving these areas populated by the elderly only. Additionally, savings are required to use facilities for elderly people. Facilities for elderly people are also in shortage. Further, elderly people who need nursing care, such as those who have difficulty walking, receive priority for admission to facilities. Thus, in daily life, there is a demand for design that considers ease of living. Due to the above-described issue of the rise in China’s elderly population, the present study carried out a workshop on design considering the elderly, which is different from the regular courses of Shandong University of Art & Design and not part of its curriculum. The university students who participated were studying product design and had reached the level of being able to express concepts and design proposals they devised through sketches and so on. Additionally, most of the students who participated had grandparents, meaning they lived near elderly people and interacted with them in the course of daily life. The workshop proceeded in the following sequence: explanation of the course, discussion among students (brainstorming), idea sketches, field trip to facility for elderly people, design proposals, and evaluations. This paper discusses mainly the above process.

2 Related Studies and the Present Study’s Role

This section will discuss studies related to the process of the workshop described in this paper. Osborn’s brainstorming method [1], which this paper employed on a trial basis, is a means of supporting generation of ideas used in a wide range of fields. We will also discuss examples of previous studies relating to generation of ideas for/thinking about highly innovative products. An interest in human generation of ideas/thinking developed in the 1950s, and training methods for generating ideas through analogy and association, such as Gordon’s Synectics [2], have been developed. Well-known means of generating ideas from the 1960s include the KJ method of Kawakita [3] and the NM method of Nakayama [4], which developed from cultural anthropology research methods. Additionally, Ichikawa’s theory of equivalent exchange is an attempt to generalize the process of human idea generation [5]. Additionally, Ueno et al. developed Robert P’s attribute listing method into a method with an awareness of the fact that narrowing down the topics at hand makes it easier to generate ideas [6]. Additionally, as a means of supporting divergent thinking in design, a cross inference model study by Noguchi [7] taught neural networks multiple models for learning rule-like information between concepts and forms, then used these in alternation to perform extrapolative deduction in an attempt to support the generation of highly novel ideas. Noguchi’s study suggests that forced inference is necessary in order to increase abstraction of thought and broaden the investigative space and that at such time an ability to carry out inference with goals that are to some extent predetermined rather than randomly divergent thought is necessary. However, this does not refer to the convergence stage proceeding to the divergence stage. Additionally, Tanaka proposes a design methodology using negative expression as a method of divergent thinking [8]. Furthermore, Nagai et al. research human creativity and thought based on cognitive science, analyzing the characteristics of creative thinking processes and putting forth a process for generating new concepts [9]. Based on previous studies, we believe this workshop can present hypothetical ideal methods for arts and design education regarding idea generation/thinking and generation of concepts for highly novel products we conceive of as situated at the upper reaches of idea generation. Some studies in the design field focusing on elderly people have pointed out problems with facilities for elderly people themselves. Such studies in the fields of interior design and architecture have focused on the theme of livable spaces for elderly people. However, there are studies such as Yamada et al., which examines the burden on caregivers at facilities for elderly people, and Kim et al., which examines the nursing care services provided by two facilities, a small scale many functions type home care establishment and a local coherence type place care establishment. Additionally, some studies have researched implements used by elderly people, such as chairs, from the perspective of ergonomics [10, 11]. Furthermore, few Chinese studies in the field of design have focused on elderly people, and most of those that have are surveys of conditions at current facilities for elderly people. Very few Chinese design education studies have taken up the theme of elderly people or focused upon them. By generating divergent ideas through brainstorming and taking a field trip to an actual facility for elderly people, we believe that the present study would help students understand the difference between hypothesis and reality and thus generate design ideas in a convergent fashion and propose furniture for use by elderly people.

3 Explanation to Students

The lead instructor lectured on the above-described issues of elderly people and explained the design process and schedule. Furthermore, as elderly people face differing social conditions in Japan, where the lead instructor is from, than in China, Kun XUE, Yunan WANG, and Yong Jian HUANG, coauthors of this paper, gave additional explanations. As most of the students were studying furniture design, the theme of the workshop was the design of furniture for use by elderly people.

4 Discussion Among Students (Brainstorming)

Brainstorming is a process for proposing ideas. Processes for generating ideas can be roughly separated into divergent and convergent processes. Divergent processes involve expansive generation of ideas with no limitation on the investigative space of thought. However, convergent processes involve restricting the investigate space of idea generation obtained through divergent processes with reference to design and planning restrictions, bearing in mind consistency with goals. It is believed that divergent processes and convergent processes proceed in a mutually complementary fashion. Convergent processes are indispensable in extracting ideas with practical applications to product design, but divergent processes are critical in obtaining highly novel ideas because the more ideas exceed established concepts in divergent processes, the higher the likelihood of obtaining creative results in convergent processes. Thus, groups of four to five students were assembled, brainstorming was carried out, and sketches were created as needed. Figure 1 shows the brainstorming process, and Fig. 2 shows the presentation of ideas obtained through brainstorming. Representatives of each group gave presentations on processes confirming the ideas and keywords obtained through brainstorming.

Fig. 1.
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Brainstorming

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Fig. 2.
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Presentation of ideas

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Additionally, because different groups often presented similar ideas, groups were allowed to exchange views among each other. Figure 3 shows an example of the results of brainstorming. (Because the actual text is in Chinese, the authors added the English text in red.) Based on keywords focusing on elderly people, multiple challenges in everyday life were discussed. These included, for instance, “Designs smoothing out angles for safety considerations”, “The necessity of assistive tools for showers”, and “Proposals for lighting devices due to the difficulty of walking in dark indoor areas at night”. Many students live around elderly people; however, because it is unclear which actual challenges they face, it seems that most students used their imaginations and posited hypotheses during the brainstorming sessions. In Fig. 3, we see divergent thinking within a narrowed range of ideas; one student went on to perform further divergent thinking after proposing problems.

Fig. 3.
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Divergent thinking (Color figure online)

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We conjecture that this is similar to the mind map model Tony Buzan advocates; thus, it seems that thinking developed in a radiant fashion [12]. The theme is written in the center, similar everyday keywords that come to mind are positioned at the outer circumference, and specific things and events felt to be dissatisfactory or puzzling are in turn positioned at the outer circumference of these. The descriptions of a thinking process in which reference was made to the outermost circumferential areas to generate subsequent concepts also seem to indicate that divergent thinking was used in brainstorming. Additionally, because the increase in the Chinese elderly population is a challenge that will be faced in the near future, the process by which students proposed problems in a divergent fashion and discussed their solutions itself seems to be valuable in design education.

5 Idea Sketches

In this process, individual students sketched the ideas obtained through brainstorming. Most students presented their final ideas using computer graphics; therefore, their idea sketches were extremely rough. As most of the brainstorming was done using language, students were instructed to remove ideas that could not be put into tangible form. Figure 4 is an example of a brainstorming idea sketch. Everyone at the workshop reviewed the ideas of all the students. The ideas were characterized by a focus on everyday life, such as “A functional design allowing elderly people to easily lie down in bed” and “A scheme allowing legs to be stretched out in a chair”. In both cases, these ideas took shape as the imaginings of students prior to the field trip to the facility for elderly people, the subsequent step. Additionally, numerous ideas were redesigns improving upon social welfare products actually sold on the market.

Fig. 4.
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An example of a brainstorming idea sketch

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6 Field Trip to a Facility for Elderly People

The university received permission from the facility, and the students were taken on a field trip. This was the first such experience for most of the students, and it proved highly educational for them. Following the field trip, the students expressed opinions such as, “The elderly people I know in everyday life are members of my family, and I thought they had only minor difficulties relative to healthy people, but actually many of these elderly people had difficulty walking”, and “I never imagined their living spaces would be so dirty. I felt sorry for them”. On the field trip, most students made unexpected discoveries, experiencing a gap between their initial ideas and reality.

7 Creating Designs

The students ultimately produced one to two design proposals using methods such as computer graphics and summarized them on a presentation board. Figure 5 is design that widens the angle of a chair back, designed by a student after visiting the facility for elderly people and observing that many of the elderly people had back trouble. There is also a proposal for another chair matching this one allowing the elderly to stretch out their legs, demonstrating a consistent sense of design. Figure 6 is a stool installed next to a bed with a design allowing elderly people to take things out easily. Figure 7 is a design intended to avoid injury in the event that an elderly person bumps into the corner of a piece of furniture, employing a corner with a large curved surface. Figure 8 is a design for a massage chair proposed by a student after asking the residents of the facility for elderly people which features they desired.

Fig. 5.
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Design that widens the angle of a chair back

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Fig. 6.
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A stool design

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Fig. 7.
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Table design

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Fig. 8.
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Design for a massage chair

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8 Evaluations

Evaluations were performed at the workshop, and at a later date, four product design experts performed additional evaluations. The experts were design instructors at Japanese, Chinese, and Taiwanese universities. The evaluations assigned one of five grades to the design proposals of twenty-nine students. It was determined that the most outstanding 10% of designs would receive an A, 20% would receive a B, 40% would receive a C, 20% would receive a D, and 10% would receive an E. The proposed designs were submitted as a PowerPoint file containing the final design resulting from the processes described in this paper, including brainstorming and the field trip to the facility for elderly people. These processes were reviewed, and an overall grade was assigned. The overall grade differed depending on which process received additional points; however, all four evaluators agreed that Fig. 9 is an excellent design. It solves a problem of elderly people and proposes a design for final form and function.

Fig. 9.
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An excellent design of example

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9 Conclusion

We expect that in China, products for elderly people will begin to be developed in earnest. We believe that the workshop this paper discusses will prove useful in encouraging awareness of elderly people among the next generation of designers. However, in Japan, where the population is aging, real social problems are already becoming apparent, and national facilities and support systems are being instituted. Awareness at the national level is important in China as well; however, it is crucial to incorporate such ideas into education. Additionally, for students’ evaluations, it is necessary to determine criteria that differ from those of design proposals in ordinary classes. Particularly, it became clear through this workshop that it is important to make students aware of the contrasts between the hypotheses generated through brainstorming and the realities they became aware of through the field trip to the facility for the elderly.